Thursday, October 11, 2012

Colin Campbell on Peak Oil

Hello! This is Ugo Bardi - I tend to overextend myself on the Web by writing a lot of stuff. Presently, my blog in English is titled "Cassandra's Legacy". In English, I have another blog a little more esoteric, titled Chimeras. The first is dedicated to sustainability, the second to mythology, history, and art. See also my latest book, "The Seneca Effect," Springer 2017.

11 comments:

That oil discovery vs production chart is the really sobering one. For all the announcements of new oil fields, and wishful thinking of some Americans regarding their supposed wealth of resources (if only that nasty Obama would let them be exploited), the physical reality is completely implacable - oil discovery inexorably declines and therefore oil production must inevitably follow. Modern industrial society is built on growth, and growth is built on abundant cheap energy, so unless someone comes up with a miracle, we're looking at very radical changes to global civilisation, very soon. We're going to have to get used to living with a lot less energy, as Richard Heinberg says. Not easy in a world of 7 billion people, half of whom live in cities - almost the definition of unsustainability.

"We’re already past the point of dangerous [manmade] interference with the climate system — not approaching it — past it,” said Jeffrey Sachs, an economist who directs Columbia’s Earth Institute." -Source.

have you published your global energy+GDP outlook baded on Lotka-Volterra model somwhere? (Bardi and Yaxley), I found this graf only with the notation "to be published" and I would like to use use it in my paper. Many thanks,

Hi, Alex.... no, we didn't publish it. Too many things to do. We would like to return on this subject, but Leigh (Yaxley) is now too busy. He can work on these things only in feverish and occasional bursts and I was waiting for the next one! I have been waiting for a long time, though. But, I do plan to return on these data. What kind of paper are you publishing? Could we collaborate on this matter?

I will use it as it is (cite as a conference presentation). I will give a presentation for local authorities on peak oil - coupled with the educational text - this is a referenced paper based on the small project of one NGO in Slovakia. At this time I am too bussy to publish a serious IF paper on resource depletion - however we might try to do something in the near future,

In the very interesting and informative (and also encouraging) video above, I think Colin Campbell is being more than a little bit kind and magnanimous (perhaps one could call it being “diplomatic”) towards the IMF. (and those who are interested can go directly to minute 25 of his presentation to hear his comments about the recent IMF Working Paper. What that paper does is give “equal weight” and “take the average” between the “economic/technological” approach (based on mainstream supply and demand economic theories) used by the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the so called “geological view” (based on physical realities in the ground) used by Colin Powell and ASPO ….to determine the impact of oil limits on the future of the global economy. Although mainstream supply and demand economic theories worked reasonably well during the earlier historical period when there was ample physical supply of oil available to meet increasing but relatively smaller demand, they make wrong predictions now, once physical supply becomes ever more scarce and demand ever greater, if GDP growth projection figures are to be believed. So to argue that “those theories worked well in the past” and so can still work now and in the future is simply wrong. What works under certain conditions doesn’t necessarily work under different ones. Basically to make the point more simply (perhaps too simply) “supply” cannot rise to meet higher demand once there is simply no oil (or much less oil) left in the ground. And although one could interpret the IMF’s change of view as “making progress” one also could view it as a gigantic fudge (or a gigantic political favor to those in whose interest it is, that “business as usual” continues to be seen as being able to go on indefinitely)….i.e. a monumental fudge of adding or combining something wrong with something right to presumably get something “half right”. If the IMF weren’t the premiere economic institution in the world which it is, this perhaps could be forgiven but given its central role in the modern –day version of neoliberal capitalism……. being “half right” –in my view- just doesn’t cut it. And a pretty good article about the IMF Working Paper as well as a link to the paper itself….(for those who have the patience to go through loads of fundamentally meaningless equations) can be found on: http://www.countercurrents.org/tverberg110512.htmBut probably Colin Campbell is right and reasonable in being “magnanimous” and its good that at least the IMF seems to have taken a small detour from one of its many journeys in Alice in Wonderland and the related “prescriptions”. Colin Campbell also mentions a much more meaningful innovation by the government of Portugal to come up with an Oil Depletion Protocol suggesting that Ireland could adopt something similar. These seem like excellent ideas and measures that countries can adopt immediately. But would countries like the United States and China ever adopt anything similar? Even though in fact all it would take for the U.S. to avoid an otherwise ever more likely economic crash once that shale and fracking everything in sight business is finally exposed for the propaganda that it is, would be to eliminate energy waste (which must account for at least 30% of its oil use, if not more) So although things look bleak there ARE things that can be done. All that has to happen is various folks to actually do them.

I hope readers and Colin Campbell both will forgive me for mis-writing his name in the body of my entry above, and calling him Colin Powell. My brain must have somehow gotten scrambled regarding presentations dealing with truth and reality to those publicly spouting dangerous lies and propaganda ...and without my even realizing it !

....but now I see that maybe I wasn't the only one to get Campbell confused with Powell since at the top of the video screen itself it says "Dr. Colin Powell New Energy Forum". A more recent performance that Colin Powell (whatever he may be doing now) definitely can be proud of !

Re: Alexander Ac' s comment above: At the link below is what Jeffrey Sachs said recently about Climate Change in a Bloomberg interview on August 6th: 1) The scientific debate about whether climate change is happening or not has been over for some time; 2) the political "debate" and its array of distortions / misrepresentations continues 3) There are already 10 to 15 time more climate events which are 3 standard deviations from the norm (i.e from a less than 1% chance of occurring) this represents an observable over one order of magnitude of difference in extreme climate events. Neither Obama or Romney have mentioned climate change during their campaigns and it was not discussed during the presidential debates. Draw your own conclusions about where we are heading. And the common cliche which says "things will have to get a lot worse before they will get any better" is unfortunately also a complete contradiction. (once they get a lot worse it will be nearly impossible to reverse course)

Ugo Bardi's blog

This blog deals with the future of humankind in view of such things as the overexploitation of natural resourecs and the effects of global warming. It is a bit catastrophistic, I know, but, after all, the ancient prophetess, Cassandra (above in a painting by Evelyn de Morgan) turned out to have been right!

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Listen! for no more the presage of my soul, Bride-like, shall peer from its secluding veil; But as the morning wind blows clear the east,More bright shall blow the wind of prophecy,And I will speak, but in dark speech no more.(Aeschylus, Agamemnon)

The Seneca Effect

The Seneca Effect: is this what our future looks like?

Chimeras: another blog by UB

Another blog by Ugo Bardi; it is dedicated to art, myths, literature, and history with a special attention to ancient monsters and deities.

Rules of the blog

I try to publish at least a post every week, typically on Mondays, but additional posts often appear on different days. Comments are moderated: no insults, no hate, no trolls. You may reproduce my posts as you like, citing the source is appreciated!

About the author

Ugo Bardi teaches physical chemistry at the University of Florence, in Italy. He is interested in resource depletion, system dynamics modeling, climate science and renewable energy. Contact: ugo.bardi(whirlything)unifi.it